A Christmas Affair (15 page)

He even caught the exchange of, “Dag, he’s cuter than the other one.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a draw.”

The one they had called Melody rolled her eyes. “Don’t you girls ever think about anything other than boys?”

Her friends looked at each other as the elevator’s doors started to close and said, “No.”

Lyfe chuckled. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

T
he Christmas holidays were in full swing in New York. The entire city had transformed into a magical winter wonderland with sappy Christmas songs clogging up the radios and pouring out of every store. But with every tick of the clock, Corona felt herself turning more into an Ebenezer Scrooge than a St. Nick. It wasn’t just that she had to plan a great Christmas for Melody … and now her grandparents, too; but she was also running around trying to plan a wedding with her future mother-in-law, Cruella De Vil, aka Wahida James. As if that wasn’t enough, she had poor Margo giving Lyfe one excuse after another of why she couldn’t take his calls or return them.

After a week, she could tell that Margo was developing her own suspicions on the matter. And when Margo got suspicious, she got gossipy. It also didn’t help that winter flowers were being delivered daily, signed,
“From your first and only love.”
At first Margo had cooed about the flowers coming from Rowan, but now it was written on her face that she knew that the flowers were being sent from the man she lied to every day.

None of this was helping her absolve herself of the guilt that accumulated daily for cheating on her fiancé. She doubted that anything could help her with that. Every time Rowan called telling her about his long grueling hours or how the director didn’t know his head from a hole on the wall, the world crashed down on Corona’s shoulders.

I have to tell him.
However, every time that thought whispered from the back of her head it was quickly crowded out by counter thoughts of how much the confession would destroy Rowan. After all, his last fiancé had had an affair on him.

But it’s not an affair. It was … an incident—a fifteen-minute incident.

She groaned. That sounded awful, even to her ears.

“Ms. Banks, are you there?”

“Uh, what?” She’d forgotten that she was even on the phone with Universal Media Studios. “Oh, I’m sorry about that, Ted. I just spilled some coffee on my desk. I got a little distracted,” she lied.

“Not a problem.” The producer chuckled. “I did that at least three times this morning myself.” He went back over the list of actors that he would be keeping for the next season of his television show.

This time she jotted it down, because the way her mind was working lately she wasn’t going to remember the list the moment they hung up.

“By the way, I hope my invitation to the wedding doesn’t get lost in the mail,” Ted joked. “I can’t believe
that you’re actually going to marry some other guy—an actor, no less. All this time, I thought that I was making progress,” he said.

Corona tried to laugh, but it sounded stiff and flat to her own ears.

“Are you excited?”

It was a simple and legitimate question; however, Corona’s answer was anything but. “It’s … it’s a lot of planning … and work. You know, marriage isn’t something that one should take on lightly. I mean, I have a daughter. Her … concerns should be taken into account. You know what I mean? Plus, it’s not like I still have feelings for … someone else. That was in the past. A long time ago. One can never just go back to how something was after all this time. Can they? One has to move on. Put one foot in front of the other and just let go. Right?”

There was a long silence over the phone while Corona mentally reviewed that lovely word vomit that she had just spit out.

“Okay, then, uhm,” Ted said, “I guess that I’ll just see you at the wedding.”

“Yes!” She injected enthusiastically. “I can’t wait to see you there.” She quickly hung up the phone and then plopped her head into her hands. “All right, girl. Pull it together.”

Riiiiiinnnng!

She lifted her head and snatched up the phone before reading the Caller ID screen. “Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Lyfe chuckled over the line. “Is that how the big movers and shakers answer the phone in this city?”

“Lyfe?” She jumped out of her seat and twisted her neck to see out the side-glass paneling next to her door. Margo was nowhere to be seen.

“Well, I guess at this point I should be happy that you even remember my name.”

Corona drew a deep breath, but it didn’t do anything to stop the heat simmering in her core. “Of course, I remember your name.” She glanced around the room. “You’re the man who has turned my office into a flower shop.”

“Aww. So you did get them,” he said. “I was beginning to think the little man at the florist was lying to me. I didn’t get a thank-you call from you.”

Corona drew a deep breath while searching for the courage to say what she needed to say. “You didn’t get a call because I didn’t have any intentions of calling you.”

“Ouch. You really do know how to hurt a guy,” he said, but he didn’t sound the least bit hurt at all.

Now that she’d gotten what she considered to be the hard part out, Corona continued, “Look, Lyfe, I told you at the hotel that … what happened—”

“You mean my making love to you up against a wall?”

An instant image flashed inside her head. “I—uhm, yes. That incident was … regrettable.”

“Incident? Regrettable?” Lyfe paused, and then his laughter rumbled through the phone line.

The warmth that Corona was experiencing was quickly morphing into a heat wave. Not only did Lyfe have a face and body that any of her male runway models would die for, but he had a voice that could make a woman’s panties melt over the phone.

“Are those the words you used to explain to your fiancé what happened between us?”

Corona dropped back down into her chair, and, this time, she really did knock over her coffee. “Oh, dammit.”

“Careful. That’s hot stuff,” Lyfe said.

“Shh. I know it. Don’t you think … “ She stopped just as she was about to reach for a box of Kleenex on the corner of her desk. “Wait. How do you know what just happened?”

Her office door pushed open and Lyfe filled up the doorway. “Because I can see you.”

“What are you doing here?” she still asked into the phone, even though she was looking dead at him.

He continued talking into the phone as well. “Well, I figured that since you wouldn’t call me back, I would come by and see you.”

Corona shook her head even as he stepped farther into her office. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

He cocked his head and took his time drinking her in. “No. I should’ve followed you to New York a long time ago.” He finally made it over to her desk, leaned one hip on the edge and then reached over and gently removed the phone from her hands. When he hung it up, he punched the Do Not Disturb button and then pocketed his own phone.

“Once I got up here, I should have made you tell me to my face why you left.” He locked gazes with her. “I should have made you look me in the eye and tell me that you didn’t love me anymore and that you didn’t want to have a future with me—or have my children.”

Corona bounced out of her chair like a hot Pop-Tart. “You have to go.”

“Wait.” Lyfe’s hand snaked out and caught her around the wrist.

“No,” she snapped, jerking her hand free. “You’re not funny.”

At the word
“no,”
Lyfe eased back and held up both
hands in surrender. “Hey, calm down. I’m not the type of man that’s going to force you to do something that you don’t want to do. I love children, but if you don’t want to have any … “

“What?” Corona stepped back again and studied his face.
He doesn’t know. How is it possible that he doesn’t know?

“Just like I wasn’t the one who initiated our last … regrettable incident.” He cocked his head again and hit her with a smile that she remembered from his high school football days. For a moment, she felt the urge to pump her fists like pom-poms, like she had in the good ol’ days.

Lyfe lowered his hands. “You do remember asking me to kiss you in that stairwell, don’t you?”

“That was—”

“And you do remember how fast you melted in my arms, don’t you?” He stood up from the desk and moved toward her.

At the sudden lack of oxygen, Corona stepped back and then heard herself beg, “Please.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice dropping to a lower register. “I’m only going to do what you ask me to do.”

Her head jerked up. “Then leave. Go back home to Atlanta.”

“Well … anything but that,” he amended, holding on to that same cocky smile. “See … your beautiful lips say leave, but, when I kissed you, those same lips begged me to stay. I wonder what else they’ll say when I get you the way that I want you.”

She bravely took another step back. “That’s never going to happen.”

He took another step and erased the small distance between them. “Don’t you know to never say never?”

“Lyfe, I’m engaged.”

“Engagements can be broken. You taught me that.”

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. What could she say to that?

“Tell you what. I’m going to cut you a break,” Lyfe said, folding his arms. “You want me to leave? Go back to Atlanta and permanently stay out of your life? There’s only one way that I’ll agree to do it.”

Corona also folded her arms. “I’m listening.”

“One date.”

“No.” She shook her head, seeing the trap for what it was.

“Then I guess I’ll be sticking around. You do remember that your fiancé invited me to be one of his groomsmen.”

“That was when he thought you were marrying my sister.”

“I still might. If she buys me the right ring.”

“You’re not funny.”

He cocked his head the other way. “Actually, I’m hilarious. I used to make you laugh until milk squirted out of your nose.”

She didn’t mean to, but she smiled.

“Ah. There’s my Corona Mae.” Without warning, he reached out and pulled her into his arms. “God. How I’ve missed you.”

There was one solitary voice in the back of her head that told her to push her way out of his arms, but damn if she could get herself to do it.

“What’s with this whole Chloe thing, anyway?”

“It’s—just more professional sounding. It’s not … “

“Country?”

Another smile. “Something like that.”

“Well, I love Corona Mae.” He reached up and brushed her hair away from her face. “Always have—always will.”

She should have seen the kiss coming. But, then again, maybe she did and chose to do nothing about it. The next thing she knew, she was being swept away in a kiss that made her feel seventeen again. In her head, visions of them laughing on a baseball field, posing for junior prom and even sneaking away to go skinny dipping at old Robin Lake flashed in her head. This man had been more than just her first lover, he’d been her best friend.

When the kiss ended, he pulled back and smiled tenderly at her. “One date.”

She swallowed.

Lyfe continued, “If by the end of it, you still want me out of your life forever, I’ll go.” He cupped her face. “But if it goes the way I think it will, you’ll break your engagement and marry me.”

L
yfe couldn’t believe that Corona Mae hadn’t tried to cancel on him. Either she meant to try to outfox him so she could get rid of him, or she was privately hoping that the night would go according to his plans.

He was taking her to the exclusive Per Se restaurant at the Time Warner Center complex. From everything he’d heard about the place it had the perfect balance of intimacy and understated luxury. But he wished that she would’ve allowed him to pick her up instead of just meeting him at the restaurant. Then again, it was understood that as hard as he was going to try to seduce her, she was likely going to do all she could to prevent it from happening.

When he arrived at the restaurant, he couldn’t believe that he actually had butterflies—just like he had when he’d arrived at her house to take her to junior prom. He must’ve waited twenty minutes downstairs, watching
her father while he cleaned his gun. He had sweated so much that her father ended up asking him whether he had a sweat gland problem.

Now, here he was; waiting with those same butterflies. But after twenty minutes of waiting, he started to wonder whether he’d been stood up. Lyfe pulled out his cell phone at least a dozen times, imagining he heard it ring or double checking the number of bars showing.

Just when he was about to give up hope, Corona Mae breezed into the restaurant, a striking figure in a snow-white coat.

“There you are,” he said, sounding and feeling relieved. “I was beginning to think that you’d changed your mind.”

“No. A deal is a deal.”

“Well. Let’s see about our table, shall we?” he asked, helping her slip out of her coat. Beneath it was a matching white wrap-dress that hugged her curves as much as he wanted to tonight. “You look gorgeous.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “You clean up rather well yourself.”

Lyfe offered her his arm and then led her to the hostess. Within seconds they were escorted to a table that gave them a breathtaking, wintry view of Central Park. After their drink orders were taken a surprising awkward silence enveloped them.

“It’s kind of strange, huh?” he said. “Our first official date as grown-ups.” When she smiled, he relaxed.

“Yeah. It is sort of strange.” She reached for her glass of water and they both spotted how badly her hand was trembling.

“Wow. I can’t remember a time when I made
you
nervous.”

“You’re joking, right? How about the time when you convinced me to egg and toilet paper Mr. Henderson’s house because of a silly bet you made with your brother Dorian? Or the first time we went skinny dipping at Robin Lake and your brothers Ace and Hennessey came and stole our clothes?”

Ly fe laughed.

“And then there was that first time that we … “ Corona Mae caught herself.